The season of Lent has arrived this week. A time for reflection which can be used to re-ground ourselves, if we mentally follow Jesus into the wilderness and contemplate our life and faith.
Our Sunday sermon in this first week was precisely about that. And the baptismal font, normally sparkling with the water of life, was filled with dry sand today. A powerful symbol of the desert wilderness into which Jesus was sent.
Wonderfully affirming when it happens, this sermon spoke directly to me. This past Friday, I became unemployed for the second time in a year. In my mind, I’m cast again into a sort of wilderness. Not at all alone; my family walks there with me, thank God.
But I do see so many parallels with our new situation and what the Church instructs us to do at this time. Self-examination. Prayer. Denial, (although hardly self-imposed). All these things will be part of Lent for us the year.
We will face devils and angels on the road ahead. There will be choices. Maybe hard choices. Forty days worth? Hopefully not, although very possibly that, and more.
I don’t mean to elevate something as temporal as a job situation to the same place as contemplating our faith. I truly don’t do it, because a job is just a job after all, and “this too shall pass”. But it is precisely my faith that allows me to think that way. So I (we) are about to be tested and it just happens to be at a time when we are taught to think about Him and how he was tested. So as always, He will be my guide and my answer. Welcome to the wilderness.
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